Unless, therefore, he is speaking in the vague, Hackett and not Grasmere is the place described. The Fenwick note to the Epistle to Sir George Beaumont, however, decides the question (see vol. iv. p. 256). "The house (Hackett) and its inmates are referred to in the fifth book of The Excursion, in the passage beginning—
You behold,
High on the breast of yon dark mountain, dark."
[GU] Compare the Sonnet (of 1815) referring to Allan Bank, beginning—
Even as a dragon's eye that feels the stress
Of a bedimming sleep, or as a lamp
Suddenly glaring through sepulchral damp,
So burns yon Taper 'mid a black recess
Of mountains, silent, dreary, motionless, etc.
[GV] Compare the Sonnet (of 1815) beginning—